Air Supply – Infinite in Review – New Spin On An Old Classic

If youâ€™ve played the original Air Supply (and shame on the infinite runner lovers that havenâ€™t) then a lot of this will feel familiar.Â Sam is back, but his perspective has changed a bit, or more appropriately heâ€™s finding himself going around in circles.Â Air Supply â€“ Infinite is just as fun as the original, and the best part is it maintains the unlock system that kept me going back to the original for more.Â Iâ€™ve always maintained that even the best developers will falter once in a while, but so far Quantum Sheep has not let me down.

You are Spaceman Sam, and you have been commissioned by your future self to recover the eight infinity cups.Â To do this youâ€™ll have to run around 7 planets and a black hole until you get enough speed going that you can reveal the hiding place of the missing cups.Â Unfortunately there are some nasty aliens that will try to keep you from achieving your goal, but youâ€™ll be okay as long as you keep jumping over them.Â Occasionally a UFO will show up and emit a tractor beam that temporarily holds you in place, but the ground aliens keep coming so make sure you continue jumping.Â Youâ€™ll also have asteroids that show up from time to time and reverse the spin of the planet for 10 seconds.Â Oh, and then thereâ€™s the problem with running out of air.

Thankfully refills are consistently falling through the atmosphere, and running into a transparent one adds one bar back to your oxygen while running into a solid one completely refills your tank.Â There are also smart bombs that destroy everything bad thatâ€™s currently on the screen and give you some air at the same time.Â Additionally, the floating S symbol will temporarily slow things down, the freezer pauses an alien in its tracks for a bit, and the shield will destroy any bad thing that crosses your path for a short time.Â Youâ€™ll see stars in the mix as well, but all those do is help you unlock new characters to play as.Â Speaking of which, collecting oxygen and smart bombs help you unlock new musical tracks and new graphics colors respectively.Â And, just in case you canâ€™t get the infinity cup on certain planets you can unlock new planets simply by accumulating revolutions around the planets youâ€™ve already unlocked.

The default control is simple: tap to jump and double tap to launch a smart bomb.Â There are other configurations, but aside from the occasional accidental smart bomb discharge Iâ€™ve not had any problems with the initial settings.Â Besides unlocking all the choices for characters, planets and such, which really is the best part of the Air Supply series, there are 25 achievements to earn.Â Thereâ€™s even a â€œlongest runâ€ leaderboard if youâ€™re interested.Â You can also tweet your scores if you really want to.

The visuals look like something you might find in an early 80â€™s computer game, which is of course the whole charm behind them.Â There isnâ€™t a lot of detail to the game, and most of the animation is actually in the background, which can get a bit overwhelming at later stages.Â The sound effects and music also reflect the retro nature of the game, the difference being that some of the sound effects can get a bit annoying and have to be taken as a package, whereas some of the musical tracks are pretty cool and you can pick the one you want to listen to.

In the end this is basically Air Supply â€“ 1 Bit Run with your character going around in circles instead of following a linear path, but thatâ€™s okay.Â The biggest down side to the original was running out of things to unlock, so now I get to experience it all over again.Â And you know what?Â Itâ€™s just as entertaining this time around.